


The Hour Hand at the Half Hour

by Ink



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-21
Updated: 2013-03-21
Packaged: 2017-12-06 00:09:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/729446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ink/pseuds/Ink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>He just--he remembers that day at Dalton, the light streaming through the windows of the senior commons, the soaring hope and the joy--being looked at, being </i>seen,<i> for what felt like the first time. Part of that is his and his alone, untouched and untouchable by anything that came after. It has to be. He's allowed to have that, isn't he? One single, sunlit moment, suspended in time, incapable of being broken?</i></p><p>In which Blaine comes to visit, and Kurt Hummel is kind of a mess.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hour Hand at the Half Hour

The immediate problem is one of setting: the first of their student theaters is in the middle of Asian horror week. The other one is doing non-stop screenings of _No Country for Old Men._ The nearest AMC is wall-to-wall fairy tale remakes ( _the only redeeming thing about these things is the costuming,_ he tells Adam, and Adam laughs) and _Die Hard._ And so on.

The other problem is that, ultimately, there aren't a whole lot of romantic movies he hasn't already watched with Blaine. (Dissected with Blaine. Painstakingly re-enacted with Blaine.) He considers explaining this to Adam, but--he would take it the wrong way, Kurt thinks. They knew each other for a _long_ time; that's all.

In the end he ends up sprawled across the ratty old armchair in Adam's apartment as Adam ransacks his roommate's DVD collection. "I think I'm going to really enjoy this process," Adam says, "if it involves having you around here more often."

Kurt tilts his head back over the arm of the chair and smiles at him, an upside-down smile. "You're being very gracious. I'm sorry I'm so hard to please."

Adam strides the three steps over to the chair, bends down to kiss him on the mouth. It--doesn't really work, turned around as they are, but it's nice, all the same. It makes him smile wider. "You just know what you want," Adam says. "I like that about you."

After that, Wednesday nights are for movies. Adam keeps his arm curled around Kurt's waist the entire time and never, ever fights with him over the popcorn. They veer away from the tried-and-true, the big-budget rom-coms and the classics, toward the obscure, the indie, the foreign, the just-plain-weird. Once they spend an entire afternoon going through the back catalogue of a small arthouse production company founded by a friend of a friend of Adam's. It's all thoroughly wretched, and the abuse of shaky-cam makes Kurt's head hurt, but making fun of them with Adam--that's the most he's laughed in months, he thinks. (The part where Adam offers to kiss his headache better doesn't hurt either.) It's a whole new world being opened up to him, rolled out like a red carpet, endless and expansive and empty of association.

He takes it. Closed around the walls of Adam's shoebox apartment, stretched out on the couch with his legs across Adam's lap, he feels grown up and a little drunk, and most of all, _comfortable._ Being with Adam is easy and thoughtless, lazy afternoons stretching into nights, and he wonders whether this is how normal relationships go, whether being with someone usually feels this much like sliding slowly into a new life, thinking you could come to inhabit it.

At the end of the movie, Adam turns to him and asks, as he does each time, whether this is the one. (His face is grave--mock-serious, Kurt thinks, and he can appreciate the drama of it.) Each time, Kurt arranges his face into a frown, pretending to consider. _No, I don't think so,_ he always says, after a moment, and names some minor flaw in the movie's premise, some crack in the grand romance. _Maybe the next one._

He smiles at Adam, and Adam, after a moment, smiles back. _Maybe the next one,_ he echoes, already reaching for the stack.

 

*

 

The Saturday after the sixth Wednesday, he's hovering around Adam at the counter as Adam makes dinner--he'd offered to help, but Adam had waved him off--when "Peacock," of all things, comes on the radio, and Adam laughs, saying, "I love this song." He turns it up.

Kurt pulls a face that he rapidly turns into one of carefully exaggerated disgust, even though Adam isn't looking, and turns the dial to another station entirely. "Please don't ever do that again."

Adam glances over at him over the knife, indulgent and amused. "Not a Katy Perry fan?"

( _"I just think it's a touching sentiment," Blaine is saying, face deathly serious, sitting ramrod-straight across from him in the Dalton common room. "The singer is expressing her desire for her lover to feel comfortable expressing his true self, to 'show all his colors,' if you will--"_

_Kurt shoots him a look. "Do you actually believe anything you're saying?"_

_"No," Blaine says, and his face crumples into laughter. Kurt hits him, which only makes him laugh harder--_ )

He braces his elbows against the counter. "Not remotely," he says to the yellow stain on the laminate.

Adam chuckles, swiping the rest of the mushrooms off the cutting board in one clean, relaxed motion. He twirls the knife. "Sure I can't change your mind? We could do a tribute for our next performance--make it a whole theme week--"

" _No,_ " Kurt cuts in, sharp and forceful and absolutely not in the script, and then he remembers it; draws himself up stiff and affixes Adam with his snootiest expression. "Absolutely not," he sniffs. "Don't even think about it."

Adam leans forward, craning his head down to look on a level with Kurt, and his smile is still light but there is something probing in his gaze. "Is this about Blaine again?" he asks. "Did the two of you duet to Katy Perry? Did he try and serenade you with 'California Gurls?'"

He rolls his shoulders back. "No, and _no,_ " he says, decisively, and--well--it isn't actually a lie. "Not everything is about Blaine, all right?" he adds, and slides his hand across the counter to Adam's wrist, squeezing briefly. "I just don't respect her as an artist. That's all."

Adam holds his gaze for a moment longer before he nods, seeming to accept this explanation, and when Kurt changes the subject a minute later, he goes along with it. And it's not like he's okay with (sort of, kind of) lying to Adam, or like he thinks he has anything to hide, it's just--

The thing is? "Teenage Dream" is _his._

Not his and Blaine's, although once upon a time it had been that too: once upon a time it had been first on the playlist of _their song_ s, the one Blaine always hummed in his ear (leaning over the back of Kurt's chair with his arms wrapped around Kurt's neck) because he knew it would get Kurt to tilt his head back and laugh every time, face breaking into a goofy, giddy grin. But that isn't why the thought of Adam singing the song makes his heart clench painfully. He is learning to let go of that. He is.

He just--he remembers that day at Dalton, the light streaming through the windows of the senior commons, the soaring hope and the joy--being looked at, being _seen,_ for what felt like the first time. Part of that is his and his alone, untouched and untouchable by anything that came after. It has to be. He's allowed to have that, isn't he? One single, sunlit moment, suspended in time, incapable of being broken?

He knows he couldn't explain this--that moment--to anyone else, couldn't make them understand why it really has nothing to do with Blaine at all. More to the point, he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to dissect it. He doesn't want to put it into words. He doesn't want to make anyone else understand it. And he doesn't want, cannot deal with, anyone singing that song to, or for, or around him, ever again.

He knows he couldn't explain that. So he doesn't.

And if there's something sad and drawn in Adam's face sometimes after that, the lurking edge of an unspoken question--well. There might not be. He might be seeing things.

 

*

 

Blaine calls every Tuesday afternoon, like clockwork; he has since the wedding. They talk about nothing in particular, about choir room drama and petty annoyances. Rachel thinks it's sweet, _it's nice that you can at least stay friends with one another,_ she says, with a pointed quirk of the eyebrow that makes him think she's thinking of Finn. Santana makes gagging noises.

"Is something the matter?" he's saying now, a tiny bit somber, and Kurt asks, "Mm?" absently, fishing around in the bottom of a drawer--he knows his highlighter is around here _somewhere._ Lately he's found he likes to have something to do with his hands, when he's on the phone.

There's a pause, the crackle of an indrawn breath. "You've just seemed kind of distant lately," Blaine says. "I don't know, I was just wondering whether something was wrong. You know I--I worry," he adds, and his voice is soft, warm and concerned and so, so tender. Kurt knows that voice; Kurt knows his voice and the span of his hands, firm and solid as they stroke across Kurt's back, a touchstone, an assurance--

He's standing alone in the apartment with a yellow Stabilo clutched in his hand, and it's not that he's pulling away; really, he isn't. He's just trying to let go. 

"Well, it's nothing," he says. He clears his throat. "Nothing's going on--I'm just a little distracted these days, you know how it is. With schoolwork and everything."

Blaine doesn't respond to that right away. "Are you mad at _me_?" he asks quietly.

"What? No." He forces himself to laugh, high and tinny. "No, no, _no,_ of course not--you're my best friend, Blaine, you know that. Trust me, if there was something wrong, I would tell you."

Silence, again, and he can tell Blaine doesn't believe him. He takes a deep breath, centering himself. "Anyway!" he says decisively. "You should tell me what's going on with _you,_ I want to know. NYADA auditions should be coming up soon, right? Have you picked out a song yet?"

"I--yeah." Blaine clears his throat, pausing a little too long. "Yeah. I--I'm flying up for that in two weeks, actually. So you know, just, preparing for that. Working on my sight singing, trying to book a hotel . . . . "

Kurt stops. 

It's an obvious lead, but not pointed; Blaine drops it into the conversation so casually that he knows he could say nothing at all and not have it remarked upon. Except that two months ago, he wouldn't have hesitated at all; two months ago, extending the offer would not even have been a question.

"Don't--don't be silly," he says, forcing out the words. "You're welcome to stay at the loft with us, you know."

" . . . really?" And--he seems really, honestly surprised, like he'd expected to be turned away. "I'd love to, of course. I just didn't want to assume--"

"Yeah!" His fingers clench tightly around the highlighter. "Yeah. Yeah, of course. I know Rachel will be happy to see you, and I'm sure Santana will too, in her own special way, and--" His throat is closing up-- "you know you're always my--"

"Your best friend," Blaine finishes softly. He sounds sad, tired, resigned. "I know. You keep saying it."

There's an awkward silence. Kurt tries to think of something that will break through it, but his mind is an enormous blank.

"Well," he says finally, with more force than certainty, "I should probably be studying."

"--all right." A pause. "I won't keep you, then. Have a nice night."

"You too," Kurt says, automatically, but Blaine's already ended the call. He stands there blankly instead, still holding the stupid highlighter, trying to shake this thing that feels strangely like bereavement.

\--he's got a text from Adam, he notices, after a moment. _REALLY sorry about having to cancel,_ it reads. _mind coming over thursday instead? i've missed you._

Kurt takes a look around the empty and silent apartment, and it doesn't take him very long to type out a response. _Why not right now?_

(They watch _Amelie_ twice, hip-to-hip on Adam's old couch with an enormous bowl of popcorn balanced between them. It--isn't bad, precisely; he just can't concentrate on the movie. Keeps bobbing back to the surface, like some particularly inept swimmer.

After a while, he gives up on the movie, trying to focus on the feel of Adam's arm warm around him instead, centering himself around that. It works a little better.)

Two weeks after that, he's meeting Blaine at the airport.

 

*

 

He doesn't know what he was expecting, really.

At the wedding-that-wasn't, they'd spun space around them, made a world out of the joining of their hands, the casual check of shoulder against shoulder. It had been like--not like no time had passed so much as like time didn't matter at all, like nothing that had or would happen outside of the gaudy pink glitz of the reception could touch them, and he had let himself have everything. The joking, the casual touch. And then he hadn't wanted to stop.

And then--

( _I remember you telling me that singing this song with someone was a more intimate act than sex._ )

He doesn't know what he was expecting.

Here in the airport terminal, with the sounds of frantic and frazzled chatter all around them, where not ten feet away a woman is cursing as she tries to untangle her skirt from the wheels of her roller bag and a little boy pleads with his father for ice cream, he looks over at Blaine ( _clutching his suitcase in front of him, expression nervous and hopeful and maybe a little scared, like he wants nothing more than for Kurt to smile at him, to tell him everything is still okay_ ) and feels something in him, some unseen thread, pinch and twist and snap.

He looks Blaine up and down, from his scuffed shoes to his showman's smile, and turns on his heel. "Come on," he says shortly, "let's go," and doesn't bother waiting.

"Kurt, hold on--"

He puts tile behind his heels, walking briskly. Behind him, he hears shuffling: Blaine quickening his pace to catch up. "You _are_ mad at me," he says, slow and measured, like he's working something out.

Kurt doesn't turn. "No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are." He looks over and Blaine is in step with him, head cocked in Kurt's direction. He speeds up again. "Or something's _wrong_ \--Kurt, seriously, what happened?"

"Nothing happened." His fingers tighten around the strap of his bag. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Come on." Blaine huffs out a breath. "Was it something I did? Because if it was, I don't even know--will you slow _down_ \--"

(He doesn't know what he was expecting, at all.)

 

*

 

Blaine is sitting in one of the armchairs, feet curled around the cushion and chin tucked between his knees, arms wrapped around his legs. The TV is on, one of Santana's soaps, but he isn't paying attention to it. Kurt has taken a seat on the couch opposite, a careful distance away, his book propped up on the sofa arm beside him. He's reading.

Blaine is watching him.

Kurt is _reading._ He trains his eyes on the page.

Blaine kicks his legs out from under him, whirls around to face Kurt fully. "Okay," he says, "this is ridiculous. What is going _on_ with you?"

Kurt taps the jacket of the book he's holding. "I'm kind of busy."

Blaine shoots him a _look._

He looks back down. It's the same page it was twenty minutes ago. "I have to finish this before class tomorrow," he says. He doesn't move, doesn't look up, but out of the corner of his eye he sees Blaine getting up anyway. 

Blaine slides in beside him on the couch, not touching him but--close enough that he could. Kurt presses his lips together and carefully does not acknowledge this at all, does not throw even the barest glance his way. 

"Will you please look at me?" Blaine asks quietly.

Kurt closes his eyes. "I'm trying," he says, "to concentrate."

"Kurt, _please._ " 

He slides his gaze over. Blaine is curved in towards him on the couch, breathing shallow through his mouth, his eyes on Kurt's sad and bright. This close Kurt can see the slight tremble to his chin. Blaine, he knows, is nervous. He thinks if he put his hands on Blaine's he would find them unsteady as well, that they would shake and shake harder when Kurt brushed his thumbs across the knobs of Blaine's wrists, and then go still. 

"I just." Blaine swallows. Kurt watches it travel down his throat, the bob of his Adam's apple. "I feel like I'm losing you," Blaine says. "Please tell me that I'm not."

His throat's dry. "You're not losing me," he replies, but the words fall away from him. "I--I don't mean to--"

He stops there; he can't speak.

"So tell me what's going on," Blaine says, and shifts forward infinitesimally, his fingers curling against the fabric of the couch. The skin is pale around his thin mouth, but he still tries--Blaine has always _tried_ \--to smile--

All at once, Kurt feels himself stand up. The book he's holding slips through his nerveless fingers, clattering to the floor, but he hardly notices.

Blaine's gaze flickers up to him, instantly nothing but concerned. "Kurt?"

"I'm not going to _cheat,_ " he says. "I'm not."

"I," Blaine says. Blinks. "Okay?"

"I'm _not,_ " he insists, his hands finding his elbows and gripping tight, and part of him knows he's acting like a crazy person, but he's still shaking and he can't seem to stop. "God, I'm not a _cheater,_ okay--"

"--okay," Blaine says again, more slowly this time. The lines around his mouth contract with what Kurt thinks is hurt, and for some reason that just makes him madder, sends rage spiking, needle-sharp and hot, across his chest.

He smiles at Blaine, a funhouse mirror of a smile. "I'm sorry," he says. "Does it upset you to be reminded of the fact that it took you less than two months to start trawling Facebook for booty calls?"

Blaine's eyes snap open. "Wow," he says, and his mouth twitches downward. He rises to his feet, drawing himself up to his full height, and raises his chin. " _Wow._ Okay. What the hell?"

Kurt's chest feels like it's caving in, but he broadens his smile. "I guess it does."

Blaine's jaw is set hard. "This isn't fair," he says. "You can't keep doing this, Kurt--"

He laughs, and the laugh chokes on the way down, burning the back of his throat. "I 'can't keep doing this,' he repeats. "What, am I just supposed to _get over it?_ Move on? _Forgive,_ " and the word comes out a tangled snarl, "and forget?"

"You don't have to _forgive_ me--just--"

" _What,_ then?"

"You have to _pick one,_ " Blaine shouts, and he looks like his heart is breaking. "Forgive me, or don't! Be mad at me, or not. But don't--don't _do_ this, don't--ask me to stay with you, act like everything is fine, and then when I get here start screaming at me--"

His voice cracks. He's breathing hard--Kurt is too--and Kurt can see that in his eyes there are unshed tears. " _Kurt,_ " he says.

"Okay," Kurt can hear himself say, as if from a mile away. "Okay. Get out of my apartment."

Blaine's mouth hangs open. " _What?_ "

He doesn't back down. "You heard me."

 

*

 

Ten minutes later, he's standing in the middle of a dark and deserted loft, bending down (after a moment) to pick up the book by his feet. Numbly, he folds the bent pages back, trying to get them to lie flat.

Blaine had left his luggage.

Twenty minutes after that, he's on the subway.

 

*

 

_I'm sorry._

_You can come back to the apartment. Rachel will let you in._

_I'm not going to be back tonight anyway._

_PLEASE just come back to the apartment._

_I'm sorry._

He leaves a message for Rachel next, telling her what's going on, and by the time he's scrolling down to the Cs in his contacts he's crying. Adam says of course right away, when he calls, _of course you can stay the night, Kurt, are you all right, what's wrong,_ and Kurt says _no, I'm fine, nothing's wrong, I'm fine,_ which is an obvious lie, but he doesn't care much about being obvious anymore.

He tells himself not to think about it. He tells himself that for tonight, he won't have to.

 

*

 

"Can I just say something?" 

Kurt looks up from where he's nursing his mug of tea-- _yes, I know,_ Adam had said, _I'm a cliche, but I don't mind_ \--and traces a finger around the edge of the rim. "Sure," he says, because it's the least amount of syllables. He's in that kind of mood.

Adam doesn't finish his thought right away--he takes a breath and holds onto it. "I don't want to pry," he starts. "But this is about Blaine, isn't it?"

He glances back down into his mug and doesn't say anything.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Adam asks, face concerned and perfectly open.

Adam had asked him, once, towards the beginning, why he'd broken up with Blaine, and it had taken him a long time to answer. _He couldn't handle the distance,_ he'd said, fiddling with the lid of his coffee cup. _The old cliche, I guess._

He's told Adam a lot of things, about his mother's death, his father's illness, about school and the bullying and his fears that _they will all turn out to be right,_ because there's a quietness around him that Kurt finds soothing, and because he _listens,_ but--he hasn't said anything about this. And it's not about Adam--he thinks he would feel this way even if Adam was just a friend--and it's not for Blaine's sake, either. He just doesn't want to.

Which is maybe strange. All the movies and the TV shows tell him: when you have been _wronged,_ you want to tell the whole world. You want everyone to know.

And he did want everyone to know, or part of him still does, a selfish, spiteful little part; but most of him just wants to hold this feeling, to hold _wronged,_ to hold _I was with someone,_ close to his chest.

He cups his hands around the mug and lets the heat warm them. "I'd rather not," he says. "Can we--"

"You don't have to push yourself, you know," Adam says suddenly.

"Excuse me?"

Adam studies him levelly, hands braced against the kitchen countertop, and he shifts along it like he's uncomfortable with what he's about to say. "I think you're trying very hard to make things work with him," he starts. "And that's certainly admirable. But you shouldn't feel obligated to be friends with your ex. You don't _have_ to act a certain way around him. It's perfectly fine to need space--and," he adds, the lines of his mouth going flat, "if Blaine is honestly your friend, he'll understand that."

He looks across at Kurt, expectant and intent, and--it's (almost) funny. So he laughs. It comes out more like a dry cough.

Adam's eyebrows draw together. "I know I might be overstepping," he says, cautious. "But I mean it."

Kurt raises his chin. "You don't even know what this is about," he starts--

"What, Blaine? No offense, Kurt, but I think it's pretty obvious--"

"--and you don't know anything about _Blaine,_ either," Kurt says loudly, leaning forward fully now, the edges of the table digging into his stomach. Then he blinks. Did he actually just say that?

"Look," he starts, "I'm--" but Adam is coming upright now too, folding his arms over his chest.

"I know he left you," he says. "I know he's hurt you. And I know he's doing it again."

And Kurt understands, that all of these are entirely reasonable conclusions to make. Understands that none of the things Adam is saying are even, strictly, untrue. Understands that if Blaine's very name disturbed the stillness of the space they've created here, what he's about to say next could shatter it entirely. "No," he says anyway, "no, you don't know anything," and says it louder: "you don't know _anything_ about me and Blaine."

Adam falls silent. Kurt doesn't look at him; he lays his trembling hands back on the table instead. 

The thing is, this is also true.

Adam exhales slowly. "You know, you're being awfully defensive about this," he says. "Has it ever occurred to you that I don't know these things because you don't tell me?"

When Kurt doesn't answer, he continues. "I've been trying to be patient. I know you're still trying to process this--process _Blaine,_ and I hope you don't get angry at me for saying his name--"

"Now who's defensive?" Kurt snaps, but Adam presses on.

"You do this--this _thing,_ " he says, pinched and pained, "you shut down whenever he comes up, whenever--something reminds you of him or--I don't even know what it is, because you never actually tell me, you just go distant--"

"Because you don't want to hear it!"

"Who says I don't?"

"Oh come on," Kurt says hotly, "you don't honestly want to hear me talk about how I can't stop thinking about my ex--"

"I do if it upsets you!" Adam says. "I do if--Kurt, you were crying. I don't care about--measuring up or anything like that, I just want to know what's going on with you. I just want to help."

He doesn't even really need to say it, is the thing, because Kurt already knows: Adam has only ever wanted to help, to be the one to help. He is a bridge to a place unshadowed by _what came before,_ a place where not everything has to hurt, and--this is just a continuation of that. It's the same as every movie they've ever watched, every quiet evening--covering the old bit by bit, making it new. He should tell Adam, and let Adam make everything all right. He should walk across that bridge. He doesn't.

"Kurt?" Adam calls, softly.

Kurt stares down at the grain of the table, the dents in its surface. "Maybe I don't want you to help," he says, and knows it's true.

Sometimes--sometimes he just wants to keep all his memories like little glass beads, bright and pristine and perfect. He'd lock them in a jewelry box, close them tight in a drawstring bag: seal them up so they'd always be safe from any roving hands, from the smudging of uncareful fingers.

He doesn't feel like this place is safe, anymore.

 

*

 

They don't break up, exactly, but Kurt thinks it's a pretty good indicator of where they are that when he moves to leave, Adam doesn't stop him.

This time of night, the subway car is nearly empty: there's only one woman dozing across from him, her head tucked against the top of her seat, fingers curled tight around her bag. The whoosh of the train speeding to nowhere is the only sound in his ears, and it sounds, he thinks, oddly like a threat.

There are a few texts from Rachel, telling him not to be stupid and to come home, and one from Santana that's much the same--which he hadn't expected--and three--of course--from Blaine:

_Thank you._

_And you don't have to leave, you know. I'm not mad. Not really._

_Just. *Am* I losing you?_

The train has stalled at some point during this, and he taps his heel against the floor, waits for it to start up again. He thinks about Adam, about the little world, new and clean, he'd tried to build for himself here, the one that feels like it's just gone up in flames; and he lets the phone go dark, because he knows he can't ( _can't_ ) answer.


End file.
